Blu-Ray software suggestions?

[DTravel]

I'm considering an upgrade for the software I use for Blu-Ray playback and frame capturing. I started doing screencapping before Blu-Rays became so prevalent and the software I use for DVDs is fine but it doesn't handle Blu-Ray discs, so I had to get another program to play those. The problem is its not the greatest for this kind of work and I'm dealing with more and more Blu-Ray discs. (Give me a second here while I put on my cranky old-man pants....)

My needs are as follows, in no particular order. (And I do mean NEEDS, if it doesn't meet all these criteria then its of no use to me. Sorry to be harsh but I want to save both you and me from wasting time with inadequate software.):
1) Free or very low cost. I don't mind paying for my software, I just have very limited finances currently. So $100+ software packages are not an option. I'm also not interested in cracked or pirate versions. If someone is putting out software that I want, works and is useful, they deserve to get paid for it.
2) Runs under WinXP. XP is stable, works and does what I need it to do. I see no reason to pay Micro$oft to be a Beta Tester.
3) Runs on lower powered systems/has low resource requirements. (My computer is several years old and a hardware upgrade is out of the question.)
4) Has frame movement control. By that I mean allows the user to advance or rewind frame by frame while paused. (I suspect this will be the biggest sticking point as I'm not aware of any software that will allow frame by frame movement of Blu-Ray video. Maybe that's changed in the last couple of years since I looked but somehow I doubt it.)
5) Allows frame capture. (Again, most software won't allow this on Blu-Ray video but I know this is just a matter of the companies locking it out as the software I currently use allows it on DVDs but not on Blu-Rays unless I use a crack.)
6) Allows the user to save multiple frames without requiring saving each individually to the hard drive. I want to be able to capture all the screencaps from an entire movie before saving them enmass to the hard drive.
7) Allows saving frame captures as Bitmap files. (I've found Bitmaps to be better sources for the limited clumsy post-capture editing I do.)
8) Relatively simple to use. I'm reasonably computer savvy but if I have to jump thru hoops to do simple, repetitive operations its not worth the trouble. Ideally taking a frame capture shouldn't be more than hitting space to pause, a few mouse clicks or keystrokes to move forward and/or back a few frames and a single keystroke to add the currently displaying frame to the queue for saving. If I have to start dealing with pulldown menues for every cap its not worth the trouble.
9) Does NOT require online registration or startup validation. If it has to contact the manufactor's or seller's website before it will start, forget it. I want to BUY the program, not rent or lease it; I want to keep using it after they go out of business; and its none of their <censored> business what movies and videos I play on it. Plus the system it will be running on is not always connected to the internet NOR SHOULD IT HAVE TO BE!
10) Whatever other criteria I think of after posting this.

The general video playback programs aren't suitable in my experience. RealPlayer, VLC, QuickTime, etc. don't hack it. Some won't play Blu-Rays at all, others can't do it with the system I have (they are too resource hungry) or they fail some other criteria above. I also don't want programs that just automatically capture every Xth frame. I want to watch the movie or TV episode as I'm doing my screencapping and select which frames to cap for myself. I'm also not looking to rip video from the discs. The software has to do the job straight from the disc. Yes, I am a cranky old luddite former computer programmer and I have no plans to stop being one. And yes, I am aware that making screencaps without ripping video is a dying art (skill?, hobby?, whatever) but I'm comfortable doing what I do and am not looking to change. As Popeye might say, I am who I am and I'll stay who I am. I know there may not be any software out there that meets all these requirements but I won't know for certain until I try.

So, now that I've driven off the easily offended, anyone still reading this who's willing to make suggestions? If so, I appreciate the assistance. Thank you.

[deepsepia]

Blu Ray is, by design, very hard to cap. Most BluRay player apps are tightly bound to the underlying graphics hardware, making the usual screencap tricks less useful. BluRay was meant to deter copying/piracy/ripping and while the architecture isn't perfect, it does make things difficult.

For that reason, the preferred method, as you noted, is to rip into a file without encryption and then cap from that. There's a reason that everyone recommends this way of doing it-- its because it works.

A ripper examines the the blu-ray source and transcodes it into a non-hardware dependent video file, much much easier to work with.

[DTravel]

Sorry, I don't buy the "Blu Ray is harder to cap" argument. Simply in order to display the video the software has to send it to the monitor and anything that gets sent to the monitor can be saved. It is not possible for the format of a file on a disc to prevent software from doing something with the data after it has been copied off the disc and in order for the video to play and be displayed it HAS to be copied off the disc. Being able to read the data is the whole point of a disc.

The playing software is a pipeline from the disc to the monitor. The disc controls what goes into the pipeline but cannot do anything about what happens to the data once it is in the pipeline. The only reason playback software doesn't do frame capture of Blu Ray sources is because the companies made the decision not to.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by DTravel

Sorry, I don't buy the "Blu Ray is harder to cap" argument. Simply in order to display the video the software has to send it to the monitor and anything that gets sent to the monitor can be saved.

Your intuition doesn't match the architecture.

If you want to read a detailed description of BluRay's, see:
"BLU-RAY DISC NEXT-GENERATION OPTICAL STORAGE: PROTECTING CONTENT ON THE BD-ROM"
available here: http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/vectors/brcp.pdf

in part:

On a PC, content must also be protected as it passes over a data bus from the BD-ROM drive to the decryp- tion and playback software running on the host PC. This is particularly important when using industry-standard bus interfaces such as Serial ATA (SATA), Parallel ATA, and USB with cables that may be accessible to hackers. AACS defines a bus authentication system that is designed to ensure a secure environment as data passes over a data bus.

The first step in securing any open interface is to authenticate the device on each end of the link—in this case, the BD-ROM drive on one end and the decryption and playback software on the other end. Authentication is the process of identifying each device and confirming that it is a “trusted” device. AACS authentication uses a complex challenge and response system that allows both devices to confidently identify each other.

Screencaps are made possible by software access to video information before it goes to the monitor, that is, from inside the operating system.

BluRay was designed to make this extremely difficult, and they've succeeded. The Bluray decoder is "watching" the interaction between the disc and decoder, and between the decoder and the ports, and has a number of tricks to sabotage any attempt to eavesdrop on that "conversation". With a DVD, you can can use standard programming functions to "grab" what's written to the screen buffer-- BluRay doesn't allow this, and thus you don't see BluRay screencap progams. This is also why you don't see BluRay (or HDMI) on Apple products-- Jobs wasn't willing to allow someone else to dictate the specs by which his OS would talk to monitors.

Blu Ray's encryption has been broken, but the hardware/software interaction at runtime means that the stream remains extremely challenging to intercept. It is challenging not just technically -- its challenging legally as its protected by the DMCA, so folks can't offer commercial solutions, and both Microsoft and video chip manufacturers "patch" their software and drivers to disable hacks.

So the solution that is used by pretty much everyone who wants to screencap BluRay is to rip it to a file which doesn't have these gotchas, and cap from that.

At various times, there have been kludgy hacks that have succeeded -- Micosoft's Media Player Home Classic Edition, with some tinkering, would do it. FRAPS would do it, sort of, sometimes, usually with a watermark. Nasty letters from lawyers and revised versions mean these solutions no longer work. If you hunt around the Net, you may find someone with an old version of these applications that works correctly with your hardware-- but the odds are against it; a working solution will require not just a screencap app, but a particular version of the OS and video driver, none of which will be current.

To get a feel for just how tough the problem is, you might read through this post "Playing blu ray in Linux" , it can be done, just not on all hardware, and not particularly reliably. Note that this solution is effectively rip-then-play
http://apcmag.com/how-to-play-blu-ray-in-linux.htm

[Minimoo]

Deepsepia's post is very professional and points out in detail why the Blue Ray screencapping can not be done without ripping. Many thanks for the effort posting a lengthy explanation.

Just to add, I find requirement 6 (multiple screencaps without saving to disc) and 7 (screencap format .bmp) very contradicting to requirement 3 (old system, scarce resources). Blue Ray screenshots are 5 times sharper than DVD, thus requiring also 5 times the memory and/or disk space. Even with the very newest powerhouse computer with tens of gigabytes of memory you would have grave difficulties in handling a whole movie worth of screenshots in full resolution and .bmp -format. Moreover, your requirement 2 (to use only WinXP) limits your memory usage to 4 gigabytes tops (M$ built it so), making the memory problem even worse.

Sorry, but given all the above, I feel your mission is impossible.

[DTravel]

My current kludgy method meets the requirements listed. I can take caps from an entire Blu-Ray movie before saving them in BMP format. My issue is that it IS kludgy and I'm not sure its stable over the long term.

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by DTravel

My current kludgy method meets the requirements listed. I can take caps from an entire Blu-Ray movie before saving them in BMP format. My issue is that it IS kludgy and I'm not sure its stable over the long term.

It isn't stable over the long term -- no BluRay hack is, as the manufacturers can patch compromised hardware after the fact through code on new blurays that you play.

See the Slysoft forum for more details . . .slysoft are the folks who first cracked bluray in a commercial product ("dvdanywhere hd"), and if you check their forums, you ll see a continuous battle between the hackers and the BluRay manufacturers.

The ability to crack BluRay encryptionand rip these files to disk is pretty reliable, the ability to actually play a BluRay disc outside of the BluRay secure environment is a very hit or miss thing, and what works today ain't likely to work forever

[candela]

Recently the program AACS Updater was released. I recommend that anyone that ever played Blu-rays on his PC using VLC runs this program at least once to contribute the volume unique keys (VUK) saved by VLC on your computer to an online database. This is important because these keys cannot be revoked and their availability in a public database will ensure that these discs will remain playbable forever.

Unfortunately al publicly known keys that allow retrieval of VUKs have been revoked for almost 3 years now. However, in case you have never played Blu-rays you can still get keys and contribute them if you have never inserted a Bluray disc with an MKB newer than version v30 in your BD-drive (unless you have a hacked drive that ignores revocation lists you can use aacskeys.exe). I believe MKB v31 was released somewhere in 2012 so only play titles from BEFORE 2012. Do not insert newer discs in your drive since it will revoke the VLC keys and you will no longer be able to play ANY Blu-rays (unless the VUK is already in the online database). Once you have played Blu-rays successfully using VLC, run AACS Updater to contribute the keys to the database

[deepsepia]

Originally Posted by candela

However, in case you have never played Blu-rays you can still get keys and contribute them if you have never inserted a Bluray disc with an MKB newer than version v30 in your BD-drive (unless you have a hacked drive that ignores revocation lists you can use aacskeys.exe). I believe MKB v31 was released somewhere in 2012 so only play titles from BEFORE 2012. Do not insert newer discs in your drive since it will revoke the VLC keys and you will no longer be able to play ANY Blu-rays

Important point there.

I don't think many folks who "play" Blu-rays are aware that not only are they watching a movie, they're "updating" firmware in ways which may make it impossible to watch a movie they've already purchased!

Blu-ray really is two separate and distinct things:
1) a HD media format
2) a very aggressive Digital Rights Management system that updates itself from other Blu-ray disks, without asking for your permission.

[candela]

Originally Posted by deepsepia

Important point there.

I don't think many folks who "play" Blu-rays are aware that not only are they watching a movie, they're "updating" firmware in ways which may make it impossible to watch a movie they've already purchased!

Blu-ray really is two separate and distinct things:
1) a HD media format
2) a very aggressive Digital Rights Management system that updates itself from other Blu-ray disks, without asking for your permission.

What makes the DRM extremely vicious is that it will not only prevent you from playing new discs after a hack, it will also block you from playing discs you could play before! For example, I have a legal registered version of PowerDVD that worked fine for playing Blu-rays. After the hacks a few years ago, the PowerDVD certificates were revoked and now I cannot even play the old movies that worked fine before anymore. I'm forced to buy (!) a new version of PowerDVD (or other software player) with updated keys. This should simply be illegal and is also the reason I have largely ignored the Blu-ray format so far